Sunrise, Sunset

The beginning or the end?

Every day I am filled with a deep sense of something(s) ending. Not as in, it's bedtime and that's another day done. More like the way we've been living our lives, the things we take for granted, our habits, our rituals, our routines, our access to resources are galloping (think Year of the Red Fire Horse) to a finish line at a dizzying speed. The systems I've lived under all my life, systems that have served the few, starved the many, and lulled most of us into a weird acceptance that this is how things are and are supposed to be. None of these systems are sustainable and every day I am filled with the overwhelming sense that we're heading for the end of how things have been, how they are. Something's gotta give to make way for new and better, more sustainable and humane systems. As much as I'm terrified, I'm also giddy with excitement.

Traveling in the end times.

I'm visiting my beautiful daughter in beautiful Montreal. Of course, visiting my daughter means air travel, so I guess I need to pack away my preconceptions, my concerns of a world in collapse just now if I want to visit my daughter in her natural habitat.

On Monday I took an early morning flight from Victoria that was absolutely packed with sleepy (except for the 2 very lively toddlers sitting directly behind me) travellers. Victoria's YYJ airport was bustling, despite the very early hour. Despite the impending end of mass consumption. Despite the Strait of Hormuz and the dwindling jet fuel supplies. Despite the glaring signs of the coming collapse. Montreal's YUL airport, upon my arrival, was even more bustling. Like full-tilt-action-everywhere bustling. As I looked around at my 5 million fellow passengers, I wanted to know if they too were wondering if this might be their final flight, or if they are happily ignoring the fact that the world is in massive upheaval and air travel cannot go on forever. Or maybe I'm just being melodramatic.

Montreal

I'm visiting my beautiful daughter in beautiful Montreal. Of course I love my daughter, but I also really love Montreal. Walking the streets of Montreal always fills me with a deep sense of nostalgia, evoking the old world charm portrayed in the CanLit and NFB films of my youth. Montreal makes me feel more Jewish while also challenging me to investigate my sense of Jewishness. My beautiful daughter lives in the heavily Hasidic neighbourhood of Outremont. Despite visiting my beautiful daughter in her beautiful heavily Hasidic neighbourhood for many years, I find myself no less perplexed by these fellow Jews who make me question what it means to be a Jew.

I recently read this Walrus Magazine article by Joseph Rosen who happens to be a secular Jew living among the Hasidim in the Outremont neighbourhood of Montreal, asking all the same questions I've pondered every time I visit Montreal. Am I a self-hating Jew (classic!)? What is it about the Hasidim that I find so unsettling? Definitely, the extreme misogyny and complete disdain for the environment are top of the list. And, while not all Hasidim are pro-Zionist, it's tempting (though possibly wrong) to assume that most of them are. What else causes me to regard my daughter's neighbours as 'other' and what do I need to do change my perspective? For someone who is forever preaching against the sins of 'othering' one's neighbours, I should definitely be able to know and do better!

Cars vs no cars.

It's early June in Montreal and already swelteringly hot (oh that humidity!). It seems that drivers here, and especially the Hasidim in this particular neighbourhood, love to idle their vehicles (pet peeve alert!). Bearing in mind that it is part of the Hasidic belief that "it is their divine mission to procreate"(my body aches for the bodies of the women bearing up to a dozen babies), they tend to drive massive vehicles that can fit all their many family members (though, nine outta ten times, the vehicle has only one occupant). All drivers choosing to idle their vehicles because it's so hot out that they don't want to be without air conditioning, seem to be blissfully ignorant that their idling vehicles are spewing hot, stinky, toxic fumes at all who pass by on foot or bike. I walk past these idling vehicles (barely) resisting the temptation to lean in the window and preach about rising gas prices, depleting gas supplies, rising temperatures, and apocalyptic climate chaos. I wonder if all of our gas-powered vehicles will be brought to a standstill in the not-too-distant future. It would be a big adjustment for our car-centric species, but an absolute game-changer for the planet!

In the same exhaust-ladened breath, in the very same city, Montreal also knows how to celebrate summertime on a strictly human level. The minute the last of the winter's snow is gone for good, entire streets get blocked off to cars and set up for exhaust-free human enjoyment. Patios spring up outside every restaurant and café, replacing parking spaces. Benches are placed in the middle of the (carless) streets, underneath awnings that provide those who choose to just sit awhile protection from both blazing sun and torrential thunder storms. And, my goodness, does this city know how to do public parks! Lush, green, sprawling, parks with fountains and playgrounds and picnic benches and wildlife.

As I stroll down the middle of the (carless) street, or just sit awhile on a covered bench, I dream of a world that is built for humans (and other living creatures), not for privately owned vehicles. Seeing the incredible opposition to data centres recently gives me a glimmer of hope that a more human-centred world is possible. Or maybe I'm just being blindly optimistic.

Then and now and times to come.

Montreal fills me with nostalgia for a time when people ate liver with fried onions (apparently, some still do!), when Mordechai Richler and Leonard Cohen were Canadian household names, when I lived in the moment and didn't contemplate the collapse on a daily basis. As I ponder if this might be my last flight to visit my beautiful daughter in beautiful Montreal (you know, the Strait of Hormuz, disappearing jet fuel supplies, apocalyptic climate chaos...), I am already nostalgic for now.

The Hasidim seem to have found a way to cling to their ways, their habits, their rituals, their routines, all things that may help them navigate the drastic changes that await us all. They definitely have strong community, and that is everything. Maybe we should be looking to these groups who have fully embraced community (replacing all the toxic patriarchal parts with some matriarchal nurturing though) to guide us forward into this new world we are creating while the old one implodes.

Sunset, sunrise

I don't think it's just me feeling that the sun is setting on the world I have lived comfortably in for my entire life, and that the ending is being hastened along by the worst humanity has to offer. It's depressing as all get out, and scary too. The thing is, I fervently believe that while the billionaires and psychopaths and pedophiles and dumb motherfuckers are blowtorching everything, there are more and more and more good, creative people figuring out how to turn the ashes into something beautiful. Sure, there is still a huge swathe of the population who seem blissfully unaware of the chaos all around them and will continue to fly and drive and consume and ignore until they can't, but the resistance is rising far and wide. From Albania to Alabama to Alaska and everywhere in between, we are seeing good people rise en masse to say "Fuck this shit" and "Not today, Satan", "People over profits", "Planet over profits" and "Kindness over cruelty". We are seeing the worst of humanity smash the rules we have been taught to live by, but more and more and more of us are finding creative, joyful, loving ways to smash the patriarchal systems that serve so few and starve so many. Yeah - the sun is setting on this old world order, but working together, we will make it rise on a brighter future that values and protects the rights of all human and more-than-human beings.

Eternally hopeful! Jessica (she/her)

p.s. If you're a driver, please don't idle your car!